Object data
terracotta
height 12 cm
anonymous
St Ursula and her Virgins
Northern Netherlands, c. 1425 - c. 1550
Technical notes
Formed (solid) in a front and back mould and fired.
Condition
Highly abraded. The top half was reattached after breaking off.
Provenance
…; found in the Haarlemmermeer;1 …; send by the priest/historian Theodorus Josephus Hubertus Borret (1812-1890) to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden, 1866;2 transferred to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague, 1875; transferred to the museum, 1885
Object number: BK-NM-1659
Copyright: Public domain
Entry
In the late Middle Ages, simple pipeclay (white-firing clay) sculptures such as this were serially produced in the Low Countries using moulds.3 Utrecht was unquestionably an important centre for the production of pipeclay devotional objects, as the large number of moulds and misfires unearthed there attest. However, archaeological research shows that this production also occurred in cities such as Amsterdam, Leiden, Deventer, Kampen, Antwerp, Liège and Cologne.4 While the present piece, depicting St Ursula and her Virgins, is made of red-firing clay (terracotta) as opposed to the customary white-firing clay (pipeclay), its manufacture is essentially the same. It was discovered in the Haarlemmermeer, most likely during the draining of the lake in 1839-52. Exposed to wet and sandy conditions for an extended period, the surface is highly abraded.
Bieke van der Mark, 2024
Literature
J. Leeuwenberg with the assistance of W. Halsema-Kubes, Beeldhouwkunst in het Rijksmuseum, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1973, no. 883; B. Kruijsen, Verzamelen van middeleeuwse kunst in Nederland 1830-1903, Nijmegen 2002, no. 30
Citation
B. van der Mark, 2024, 'anonymous, St Ursula and her Virgins, Northern Netherlands, c. 1425 - c. 1550', in F. Scholten and B. van der Mark (eds.), European Sculpture in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.25646
(accessed 10 November 2024 03:43:46).